You can read my reflections on the season as a whole in this piece, in which I state that the show essentially does answer its central question: “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” Rosie is the teenage drowning victim in a murder case around which the series revolves. In the penultimate episode, all arrows point to Darren Richmond, a Seattle mayoral candidate, as the killer. Rosie, it turns out, had been a prostitute. And Richmond seems to have had many female companions in addition to his girlfriend, all of whom look like his ex-wife — and Rosie. Some more ammunition: There is a creepy guy running around Seattle call-girl circles who calls himself Orpheus, and Richmond appears to have an online identity as Orpheus. When Sarah Linden, the homicide detective on the case, confronts him on the Orpheus issue, Richmond doesn’t deny that he uses the screen name Orpheus and then proceeds to offer up an explanation of the Greek myth in response. If Richmond were not in fact Orpheus, and if his computer had been hacked only to make it appear as though he was the nut job going around town with that alias threatening to drown women, wouldn’t he have responded to her query with a certain bafflement? Wouldn’t he have said something more along the lines of, “Why are you in my apartment, practically in the middle of the night, talking about Orpheus?” (And of course the Orpheus myth, as Richmond acknowledges, has a particular relevance to him as he is a grieving widower.)

If we want to buy in to some idea that Richmond was framed then we have to believe that a lot of disparate people were involved, with no evidence of any motivation. Richmond’s girlfriend, Gwen, tells the cops that Richmond came home wet in the middle of the night that Rosie was drowned. If she is part of some elaborate conspiracy to bring down Richmond, then presumably she wouldn’t have been so palpably upset by the revelations of Richmond’s affairs. And speculation that Gwen decided to lie to the cops to get back at Richmond for his infidelities doesn’t hold up. Would she perjure herself, and thus possibly end up in prison, because her politician boyfriend cheated? There are easier ways to retaliate than falsely nailing someone for homicide. (One reader suggested that Gwen is the actual killer, but given that she finds out about Richmond’s affairs only after Rosie is dead, that doesn’t seem plausible either.)

Many people seem to believe that Richmond is innocent because Stephen Holder, Linden’s partner, manufactured the hard evidence against him (the toll-bridge photo.) This doesn’t follow. How many cop shows and movies have we seen in which dirty police officers fake proof to satisfy the obstructionist bureaucrats when they know someone is guilty? Holder is a former junkie, desperate to prove himself. He agonizes over every detail of the case, pretty convincingly. And Holder really wants Linden’s respect, as the episode in which Linden’s son goes missing takes painstaking steps to make clear. Holder falsifies the evidence, in my view, to nail a suspect he is convinced is the killer, but the falsification hardly exonerates Richmond. (Remember that Holder looked completely shocked when he realized that a prostitute had identified Richmond as Orpheus. He was alone at the time, so there was no one around to benefit from his performance.) “The Killing” is invested in character as much as procedural and the point of Holder’s actions is to create enormous tension between him and Linden next season. Where will the relationship go from here? That seems to be the real cliffhanger.

Another turn that left me pretty convinced that Richmond is guilty is that Belko, the surrogate uncle of the victim’s family, attempts to shoot him. It seemed crazy to me that the show would deploy the same plot point twice: having both Stan Larsen (with his pummeling of Rosie’s former teacher) and then Belko attack a suspect who was ultimately innocent. Maybe the show is that lame, but I honestly don’t think it is.

The writers of the series have said that the Larsen story line will segue into next season as a new case develops. “The Killing” was renewed for a second season only recently, so I suspect that while the writers were aiming for ambiguity they had really been banking on Richmond as the killer all along. AMC seems to have answered the question of “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?’ even if it didn’t mean to.